Poet, writer, and prolific translator Stephen Mitchell is learned and lucid in his translations. This volume, which has been in my library for nigh on three decades, feels to me as timeless as anything I have read, and I return to it again and again because it stresses the joy to be found through the shift in focus that comes through giving up stressful thoughts–through meditation, sudden insight, or through dawning awareness of the impermanence the imbues everything, through embracing “the dance.” I also appreciate the range of voice and culture represented by this slim volume. It seemed a good last offering with which to bring these “April Spotlights” to a close.

Context for My Poem, “The Beauty of Emptiness”:

I suppose that this last poem for the month–and the 240th one for me generated in April over eight years–appropriately regards the exhale, the release, the letting go as a natural process and one to be celebrated, rather than mourned.

With many thanks for your kind attention to my posts and poems this April.

Wishing you well,

LESLIE